Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Order fulfillment generally involves receiving, processing, and shipping orders for goods to purchasers or other recipients. Orders may be business-to-business orders or direct-to-consumer orders, among other possibilities. When an order is received, the goods are retrieved from a point of storage, e.g., a warehouse, for packaging. A container is selected, the goods are placed in the container, and the container is filled with cushioning material to protect the goods during shipment. Common types of cushioning material include air cushions (e.g., seal plastic bags filled with air), bubble wrap, paper cushioning (e.g., crumpled paper), cellulose wadding, and foam packing peanuts.
Conventional approaches to packaging goods for an order are inefficient and often ineffective. In particular, a conventional packaging process typically requires excessive and wasteful amounts of cushioning material. In addition, to provide the desired amount of cushioning, many conventional approaches require large volumes of cushioning material and a larger container, thereby increasing the amount of cost and effort to handle and ship the container. Moreover, even if the space in a container is filled with cushioning material, the cushioning material may not prevent the goods from shifting in the container and becoming damaged during shipment. Indeed, the packaging process itself may result in damaging the goods. For example, filling the remaining space in a container with packing peanuts after goods have been placed in the container may apply forces that may damage the goods.